Providing details, executive engineer of National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) Narendra Prasad Sharma said the repairs that began on Monday night would be carried out between 10pm and 5am to avoid the day time traffic rush and would continue till January 15.

Instead of stone chips and tar, this time round paver blocks are being used to repair the important stretch that got damaged due to water logging caused by overflowing drains running adjacent to the road.

“Though we are facing a lot of difficulty in working during the night in the biting cold, running the risk of the poor labourers falling sick, we are committed to completing the work before January 15. We will have to carry out repairs during the day too on January 13 and 14 in order to complete the work on time,” said Sharma.

Notably, a district administration team led by deputy commissioner Prashant Kumar and comprising other officers like ADM (law and order) Balmiki Prasad Singh and NHAI’s Sharma had on December 16 visited different places in the district in order to asses the traffic jam situation and find a solution.

Following the inspection, the deputy commissioner instructed the NHAI executive engineer to carry out immediate repairs of the road beneath Gaya Bridge as the poor condition of it was worsening the traffic situation. The stretch witnesses movement of over 2,000 vehicles in 10 minutes, including more than 200 auto-rickshaws during the rush hours between 10am to 2pm.

The district administration had also decided to install traffic signals on both ends of the bridge to enforce traffic discipline.

In a related development, a district-level task force on transport headed by the deputy commissioner on Monday decided to enforce no entry for heavy vehicles into Dhanbad town from February 1.